Around seven hours were on the clock when the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin (Sörensen/Thiim/Pittard/Martin), which had been leading for a long time, lost positions. As it turned out, Nicki Thiim had been involved in an accident earlier.

A short time later another big favourite, the #98 Rowe BMW (Catsburg/Edwards/S. van der Linde/Wittmann) was suddenly stranded at the side of the track. Sheldon van der Linde crashed into the barriers in the Bergwerk section. In onboard recordings, no other vehicle appeared to be involved.

“The way it looks in the replay, something seems to have broken,” said Marco Wittmann in the livestream. “What can I say? Mega disappointing. We were doing well the whole time, were in the leading group. Now to come out like this is disappointing.”

Maximilian Hackländer in the Konrad Lamborghini #7 (Jefferies/Pepper/di Martino/Hackländer) also slipped up. Hackländer hit the crash barrier but managed to drag himself back to the pit lane, where a tie rod was replaced on the Lamborghini Huracan GT3.

#160 Teichmann Racing KTM X-BOW GTX: Georg Griesemann, Maik Rönnefarth, Yves Volte, Felix von der Laden crashed after a fire

Earlier, Felix von der Laden in the #160 Teichmann-KTM (Griesemann/Rönnefarth/Volte/von der Laden) caused a stir: Von der Laden parked the car in the Aremberg area at the edge of the track with the car on fire – and then it rolled away, still on fire!

"Approaching Schwedenkreuz, I had no power, the petrol pressure dropped and that's when I saw the flames in the rear view camera,” he said. “I then tried to stop as quickly as possible.

"At the post inside Aremberg, I activated the on-board fire extinguisher and stayed in the cockpit as long as possible because I wanted to hit the brakes. When that didn't work and there was more and more smoke in the cockpit, I had to get out.”

As he could no longer stay in the car, it rolled away on the steep hill and then crossed the track, hitting the barrier on the other side.

He added: “The car has no handbrake and so it rolled off. There was no stopping it. It's a shame, I was doing the best lap times of my life, the car was set up perfectly by the team.”

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